During normal use on machines such as mining machines including electric rope shovels, ground engaging tool adapters may experience stresses in their legs that straddle the lips of excavating buckets and the like. It is not uncommon for these components to see extremely high loads due to severe operating or material conditions. Typically, when this occurs, the legs of the adapters may fall off the bucket or the like. This can lead to undesirable downtime for the machine while these parts are replaced.
FIG. 1 illustrates a power or mining shovel 100 as is known in the art. The type of shovel shown is an electric rope shovel and includes a bucket 102 for excavating material in mining or quarry environments. The bucket 102 has a lower front lip 104 to which is attached a plurality of tool adapters 106 and tools 108 that are configured to break up material to facilitate its intake into the interior of the bucket 102. FIG. 2 shows an enlarged view of such a similar bucket 102 in isolation from the machine that has an alternating sequence of adapters 106 with tips or tools 108 that is different than those described later in FIG. 3 and those adapters 106′ and tools or tips 108′ that are similar to those described later in FIG. 3.